"Americans are more trusting of the market and value the signals it sends. Continental Europeans, long suspicious of the financial markets, became even more so after the financial crisis"

Sentences like this impart an impression of saying something deep whilst they are really just monuments of prejudice.

The problem with CDS' is that they lend themselves all to easily to misuse. Although they can be very (and usually are) useful instruments to manage risk: if there is no requirement of being exposed to the risk the CDS covers subscribing to a CDS boils down to becoming the beneficiary of the demise of a third party. A rather perverted position in some minds no doubt. I guess, this is the reason why this is being debated in Europe.

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About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.